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I main Karma and have over 100 games played with her. That being said, she's probably the most team dependant champ out there. With the right team that knows her abilities (specifically W), she totally wrecks face. With the right lane mate (Xin, Irelia, Riven, Tryn, Blitz) practically no other lane combo can stop you. Gap Closer + Mantra Shield is pretty much unstoppable and a guaranteed instakill vs a squishie. However, with bad team that doesn't know her abilities (like the ones that run away as soon as you drop a 500hp shield on them), or a bunch of squishies that melt with or without heals/shields, she feels very UP and it makes for a disheartening game. Nothing like dropping your heal and shield on a carry and having them run away, leaving you to be torn apart by the enemy Xin while all your spells are on cooldown.

She's defintely very strong lane phase with amazing harass against all except for maybe Caitlyn and Kog. She's pretty strong late game too IF you build a lot of AP. Get 400 AP or so and dropping a 600 HP/DMG AoE exploding shield in a team fight can really turn the tide if you manage to hit 2-3 champs at once.

Her main problems are as follows:
1) In a teamfight she really gets two mantras. So he can heal once and do a mantra shield once. This limits her effectiveness unless your team plays smart. Hitting 3 friendly champs and 3 enemy champs for 350 HP heals while simultaneously doing 400 dmg to the enemy is OP, however it is just as likely that you may be forced to blow the heal on 1 champ to save him, while not hitting any enemies. very inconsistent.

2) No hard CC. Whether AP carry or support, not having hard CC limits her ability to fill a vital need on the team.

Give her 4 seconds less on the timer for her mantra cooldowns, and silence on her tether, and she'll be pure gold throughout the game.

Karma is underplayed mostly because of her W ability and no hard CC. Her other abilities are off the chart powerful.

A good Karma can harrass very well using the shield explosion on minions or other champs. I typically last hit escaping champs with a shield explosion right by their turret.

Using her W is the hardest part. The easiest way to use it is to boost an allies speed for ganking. The hard way is to tie it to a target then run a circle around the group of enemies to hit them all for damage.

Itemwise it is best to build Karma defensively. Grab an Archlic staff asap, then build up defensive mana items like Banshees, Frozen Heart, Rod of Ages. By level 18 you should easily have around 325 AP using only an Archlich, Frozen, and RoA. Remember her passive will reward you an extra 130 AP if you are low on life. Give her some high mobility boots so you can keep up with your champs during ganks and run away when getting ganked.

Don't worry too much about price because Karma can clear waves of minions extremely fast. She is an excellent farmer and an ok jungler.

Masteries, I use a defense/offense build with mostly defense. to be honest I use my tank master and my mana recovery rune page. This will make you deceptively durable and an extreme pain to kill.

Try to keep one Mantra up at all times unless its during a team fight.

Karma is best used in team fights to blast groups of enemies for around 1500 damage with her combo. Her heal replenishes a percentage of health so it is good to use it on tanks as well as carries. She specializes in kiting enemy melee carries and tanks. While kiting she can destroy these character with her burst combo damage and survive the punishment they dish out. Auto attack champs are harder to kill because of their consistent damage. Bursty champs are fair game for her. Her shield is the most powerful shield in the game.

So far out of all the support champs, I use Karma the most since she fits into many team builds easily. I got Karma, Soraka, Taric, then Sona. I stopped using Soraka as my main support because she is target #1 in every team fight. Karma is easily underestimated and when she is focused she has the ability to stay alive and escape.